Major department chain with more than 50 stores to shut three shops in weeks as closing down sales launched
A MAJOR department chain with more than 50 stores will reportedly close three shops.
Frasers Group is planning to close three of its Flannels Junior stores across Bluewater, Westfield Stratford and Westfield White City.
Closing down sales have been launched across the three stores and staff have been made redundant, according to Drapers.
Flannels Junior first opened in 2023 when Frasers bought Base Childresnwear from JD Sports and later rebranded the stores.
The store sells designer clothing for children, including pricey brands such as Gucci and Boss.
Flannels, which has over 80 stores across the UK, opened its first children’s store in Glasgow back in 2021.
The store in the Scottish city will be the only remaining junior store after the three closures take place.
The Sun has contacted Frasers Group for comment.
It’s not the first store the major retailer has marked for closure in recent weeks.
The brand has plans to shut its House of Fraser store on Lincoln High Street store in a matter of weeks.
Back in December the store also shut in Bluewater shopping centre.
The department store had been operated out of a large unit which occupies two floors in the Greenhithe shopping centre for years.
Despite shoppers describing the closure as an “end of an era”, they are being given a goodbye gift in the form of a 20% discount on in-store buys before it officially shut.
Over the summer the brand also shit one of its designer brands Tessuti at Belfast’s Victoria Square shopping complex.
Commenting at the time, a spokesperson from Frasers Group confirmed, said “It is with regret that we announce Tessuti Belfast will be closing late Summer.
“Where possible, we are committed to finding new roles within the Group for staff.”
The retail brand, which Frasers Group purchased from JD Sports last year, launched its first location in Ireland in Belfast in December 2022.
The designer brand opened at the 12,900 square foot site at William Street entrance to Victoria square after taking over former Topshop unit.
TROUBLE ON THE HIGH STREET
Plenty of other retailers are closing stores across the high street as households lean more towards online shopping and amid high business rates.
Soaring inflation in recent years has also dented shoppers’ pockets.
The Centre for Retail Research’s latest analysis suggests 13,479 stores, the equivalent of 37 each day, shut for good in 2024.
Of those, 11,341 were independent shops while 2,138 were shut by larger retailers.
The data also showed over half the stores that closed last year were shut due to the store or retailer going through insolvency proceedings.
This is when formal measures are taken to deal with tackling a business‘s debt.
Retailers are also shutting stores in 2025.
New Look is ramping up a store closure programme ahead of April’s National Insurance hike.
Approximately a quarter of the retailer’s 364 stores are at risk when their leases expire.
This equates to about 91 stores, with a significant impact on its 8,000-strong workforce.
The company has restructured its store estate twice in the past six years, reducing its portfolio from around 600 UK stores in 2018.
It also closed all of its 26 stores across Ireland, marking the end of a two decade tenure in the country.
RETAIL PAIN IN 2025
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
Research by the British Chambers of Commerce shows that more than half of companies plan to raise prices by early April.
A survey of more than 4,800 firms found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024.
Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer’s household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.”